BERKELEY — UC Berkeley police and administrators bungled their response to a November protest that ended in dozens of arrests and police beatings, an investigative panel has concluded.

In a 128-page report released Wednesday, the university’s Police Review Board criticized leaders at UC Berkeley — birthplace of the Free Speech Movement — for being unprepared for civil disobedience. The lack of preparation gave the impression that administrators did not care about students’ concerns about tuition increases and budget cuts, which “fanned flames of anger” Nov. 20 among protesters, the panel wrote.

The board also found that budget cuts had thinned the UC Police Department to the point where officers had little leadership as they first responded to the students’ daylong occupation of Wheeler Hall early that morning. The first officer to respond made the “unwise” decision to threaten to use pepper spray on the protesters, the panel said.

About 40 people had taken over the classroom building, while scores more gathered outside Wheeler. A total of 46 people were arrested — 43 inside Wheeler and three outside — and one woman had her fingers broken, apparently by a police baton.

Only five UC officers were on duty the morning of the protest, the report noted, despite the department’s advance knowledge that an “escalation” was scheduled for that day. And the department had made no arrangements to bring in off-duty officers if needed, panelists discovered.

Officers clad in riot gear, called in from other agencies hours after the Wheeler occupation began, marched into the fray after a limited briefing and little discussion about alternative approaches, the board concluded. The strategy inflamed tensions in the crowd outside Wheeler Hall, panelists said, leading to violent confrontations.

The board was led by UC Berkeley law professor Wayne Brazil, a former federal judge, and also included other professors, students, employees and Ronald Nelson, the city of Berkeley’s former police chief.

The Wheeler protest came at a particularly tumultuous time in the 10-campus University of California system. Protests roiled several campuses the same week, and a subsequent Berkeley protest in December led to vandalism at the campus home of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.

Birgeneau said Wednesday that he accepts the board’s criticism and that the university started improving its methods of dealing with protesters immediately after Nov. 20.

“We frankly knew at the time that we could and should have done a better job,” the chancellor told reporters. The report, he added, “is not the most pleasant document I’ve read as leader of this campus.”

The investigation did not determine whether police used excessive force, but UC police Chief Mitch Celaya said his department, as well as the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and Berkeley Police Department, are reviewing complaints against officers.

Celaya admitted that his officers should have dealt with the demonstration better.

“The disappointment for me is that we’ve done these things (to improve communications) in the past,” he said. “On Nov. 20, we didn’t implement these best practices.”

Administrators noted Wednesday that the report did not assign blame to students, employees, professors and others who may have provoked police. And Brazil expressed frustration that virtually no students responded to his inquiries as he led the investigation.

“We had a very hard time getting input from people on the front line,” he said. “We wanted input from people on the front line. (Students) just literally wouldn’t respond.”

One of the protest leaders, doctoral student Callie Maidhof, said Wednesday that the blame for Nov. 20 rests squarely with police and administrators. Students have been “pretty staid” in their response to police intimidation, she said.

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